Stojanović: With the Ohrid Agreement, Serbia was obliged not to prosecute KLA members for war crimes

The former director of the Military Security Agency (VBA), Momir Stojanović, told the Beta agency today that by accepting the Ohrid Agreement, Serbia’s authorities were obliged not to prosecute members of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army who committed war crimes against the civilian population in 1998 and 1999, as the Serbian newspaper Danas reports.

Stojanović told Beta that, while KLA members suspected of war crimes move freely around Serbia, the authorities in Pristina have arrested and sentenced dozens of Serbs to many years in prison.

“In the Ohrid Agreement, which the former president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, accepted on March 18, 2023, it is written that the Republic of Serbia is obliged to make available to Kosovo’s institutions the documents and persons related to the events of 1998 and 1999. In the following point it is written that the Republic of Serbia is obliged not to prosecute persons from Kosovo in connection with the events of that war period,” Stojanović said.

As an example, Danas recalls the arrest of Osman Seljmani on July 1 this year at the Mutivode border crossing by the Criminal Police — the War Crimes Detection Service, together with the Leskovac police and the border police, on suspicion that in June 1999 in Pristina he had taken part in the murder of the Serbian couple Vladimir and Persa Stanisavljević. Serbian police announced at the time that there were grounds to suspect that Seljmani, on June 14, 1999, in Pristina’s Sofali neighborhood, together with several KLA members, using cold weapons and firearms, had killed the Stanisavljević couple “in a cruel and insidious manner.”

Seljmani was initially given police detention of up to 48 hours, and then, on the proposal of the Public Prosecution for War Crimes, the High Court in Belgrade — War Crimes Department ordered detention of up to 30 days. On September 21, Seljmani was released from detention without any public explanation from Serbian judicial institutions as to what decision he was released on, or whether the investigation against him has been discontinued. His family had rejected the suspicions from day one, claiming that at the time of the murder the Serbian prosecution suspects him of, he was in Macedonia.

The EU and Kosovo’s authorities have assessed this and previous arrests of Albanians suspected of war crimes as violations of the obligations Belgrade has undertaken in the dialogue. Justice Minister Nenad Vujić did not answer Beta’s questions as to why Seljmani was released from detention, whether the arrests of Albanians suspected of war crimes constitute violations of the agreements reached between Belgrade and Pristina, and how many KLA members suspected or convicted of war crimes are currently in Serbian prisons.